Analysis of Politics, Philosophy and Economics from a Marxist Perspective

Monday, 9 May 2016

These Were Actually Great Election Results For Labour

London

The Tories
and Tory press have portrayed last week's election results as
terrible for Labour. The Blair-rights have been noted only by their
more vociferous expression of that sentiment. More rational voices,
and Corbyn's supporters have calmly spoken about the steady progress
that the results represent. But, in fact, these were great results
for Labour. Let me explain why.

Let's start
with the most obvious good result – that of Sadiq Khan for London
Mayor. Khan won with nearly 60% of the vote. Whether the size of
the win is because of the vicious racist campaign run against him by
the Tories, or despite it, is hard to know. Even many Tories spoke
up to say how much they had been turned off by the Tory smears. Yet,
given the fact that sections of the Blair-rights have used the same
kind of smear tactics, with, mostly confected, claims of
anti-semitism, against sections of the Labour Party, who they
associate as being Corbyn supporters, it would be unlikely that such
tactics are totally ineffective.

Its one
thing for educated, cultured, middle class Tories to be offended by
that kind of crass racism, but, in a country where racism and fear of
immigrants has become inseparable from a fear of terrorists, and
where vile racist organisations like UKIP feed off it, and come
second in many election contests, it is another to believe that these
kinds of smears have no effect. After all, Lynton Crosby was brought
in, and given his knighthood, by the Tories, precisely because he had
shown, in Australia, that such tactics work; he used the same tactics
successfully in last year's election, and that was just to whip up
nationalist fear amongst frightened, English petit-bourgeois against
the Scots; and across the ocean, the same kind of approach has worked
wonderfully for Donald Trump.

The
Blair-rights obviously felt that such smears would work. That is
why, for months, they have been creating the groundwork for the
attack on “anti-semitism” within the party, which they
unleashed with full force, and media coverage, in the week before the
election, in the hope of doing maximum damage to Labour's election
prospects. They failed in that attempt, and that is one reason that
last week's election results were great for Labour. The Blair-rights
greatest prize would have been for Khan, himself a soft Blair-right,
to have lost in London, and the “anti-semitism” campaign
they launched played directly into the smear campaign that the Tories
were undertaking against him.

Had Khan
lost, the planned Blair-right palace coup would have been launched
against Corbyn, with all of the bloodshed, and destruction of the
Labour Party that would have entailed. So, its great for Labour that
this election result prevented that from happening. It is also great
that Labour won more generally in the London Assembly Elections,
which undermines the idea that Khan's win was solely down to his
adoption of some return to wishy-washy, Blair-right, big tent,
liberal politics. But, its important to consider why the
Blair-rights were led to such a desperate approach, and why they are
prepared to destroy the Labour Party to achieve their own personal –
it can't even be said sectarian, because when it comes down to it
they are just a gang of personally driven individuals – ends.

The
Blair-rights find themselves in a wilderness without a map or
compass. Their entire politics had been based for twenty years, on
the world they knew continuing for ever. The problem was that the
world they knew, was itself a mirage, built up on a fiction of
private debt, and inflated asset prices. When that fiction began to
unravel, so did the world that the Blair-rights knew, and thought
would last forever. But, they still cannot reconcile themselves to
that. They are suffering from severe cognitive dissonance. They
want to go back to a world that was based on nothing, and which no
longer exists.

It is a
fantasy world whose groundwork they inherited from the Thatcher
Tories, and on whose shaky foundations they built one high rise
office block after another, reaching up to the sky, in the same
proportion that stock, bond and property markets were growing like
Jack's Beanstalk. It is a fantasy world they still share with
Cameron's Tories who are trying desperately to prevent the audience
seeing behind the stage curtains, and spoiling the fantasy. Another
example of that was given last week, by the return of 100% mortgages,
reminiscent of the period of Northern Rock, and the weeks ahead of the financial meltdown.

So, the
Blair-rights, along with the Tories and Tory media knew for certain
that Corbyn, or someone like him, could never be elected Leader of
the Labour Party. In the 1980's, when party members had the temerity
to suggest that, as it was they who who did all the work, week in
week out, of getting councillors and MP's elected, it would be rather
nice if they also had a bigger role on selecting the candidates to
stand for those positions, the Blair-rights predecessors took
umbrage. The idea that a career as a councillor or MP, for life, was
rather a nice prospect, is not something that has only just occurred
to the Blair-rights.

So, having
failed to prevent the idea that party members should have an active
role in regularly selecting such candidates, and party leaders, the
right in the LP argued for one member one vote, rather than such
processes being part and parcel of a democratic debate and decision
within party meetings. They believed that one member one vote would
achieve their ends, because it would mean that tens of thousands of
inactive members would get to vote, for Labour leaders and so on,
based on nothing more than the friendly advice of the Sun, and other
Tory papers.

Yet, even
that didn't seem to work. In 2010, it had resulted in Ed Miliband
being elected, and beating the anointed brother David! So, the
Blair-rights concluded that the franchise had not been widened
enough. Seeing how well the idea of primaries works in the United
States, which results in the selection of people like Donald Trump to
stand as candidates for the most powerful position in the world, the
Blair-rights thought it would be a good idea here too. John Mann MP,
was one of those first extolling the idea, and volunteering to run a
pilot scheme for such an open primary in his constituency.

And, given
the mindset of the Blair-rights why wouldn't you? In your world, it
is impossible for large number of ordinary people to be fed up with
years of spin, lies, austerity, and debt and to want a real
alternative to all those things. All that is required is to make a
great play of opposing all those things, put forward a photogenic
leader, whose lack of any backbone enables them to bend in whatever
way the Tory media require, so as to contort principles into sounding
like they conform with the latest popular fad, fear and fantasy, and
who can offer a ready to hand sound bite, whose vacuousness is such
that tomorrow the exact opposite sentiment can be expressed without
anyone noting any contradiction.

So, when the
Labour Party did adopt such a process, and opened up the election for
Leader to Labour supporters as well as members, the Blair-rights knew
that this would result in the election of the kind of empty media
puppet they required. It is why they felt happy to allow Jeremy
Corbyn on to the ballot paper so as to give the whole proceedings an
air of transparency, as well as rubbing it in to the Left, that “see
when you stand for these positions, you have absolutely no support”.
Had that leadership election happened like that in 2010, they would
probably have been right. David Miliband would have been elected.
The point is 2015 was not 2010, and the world had changed
fundamentally.

Neither the
Blair-rights, nor the Tories and Tory media have yet realised that
the world has changed, and so they keep trying to play the game
according to yesterday's play book. They continually tell us that
people like Khan – their sort of people – are the ones who have
the modern message and image, but that is only because they are
living in a Millennium Bubble, where for them time has stood still.
The thing that they have not noticed is that the message they claim
is modern is now twenty years out of date. It is not a new message,
but a very old message, that was itself repackaged for consumption in
the 1990's. They don't seem to have noticed that in Europe, in North
America, and in Britain, the new generation have discarded that
message, and are flocking to a new one – the one being promoted by
Syriza, Podemos, Bernie Sanders, and Corbyn. The Blair-rights are
yesterday's people trying to hold on, like Dorian Gray, to the image
of their fading youth.

The Local
Council Elections and Wales

In the weeks
prior to the elections, the Blair-rights and Tories were crowing that
Labour was going to do terribly. It was a continuation of the line
they have pushed since before Corbyn was elected Leader, that his
politics could not be popular and so on. They were predicting that
Labour could lose anything up to 400 council seats. When Corbyn came
out to say that Labour would not lose any net seats, they lost no
time in poking fun at his supposed amateurism, in not understanding
that to play the game, you have to play down your expectations so as
to make the actual results appear better. Of course, had he come out
to say he expected to lose seats they would have attacked him for
that too!

And, of
course, when it turned out that he was right, and that Labour as good
as didn't lose any net Council seats, they were quick to explain
things in terms of claiming that Corbyn had actually played a very
good game of managing expectations ahead of the results, which we
were now told were not really very good. So, the Blair-rights and
Tories proclaim a likely loss of up to 400 seats, and when it turns
out that its only 20 odd, with nearly all Councils retained, and
advances in some areas, those same Blair-rights and Tories want to
tell us that this is actually a terrible result.

In fact,
measured against 2012, when these seats were last fought, losing this
handful of seats is relatively good, because 2012 was a very good
year for Labour fighting local elections. Given that in the week
ahead of these elections, the Blair-rights had blown up the
anti-semitism row, flooded TV studios with their representatives to
talk about it and nothing else, and brought about the suspension of a
number of LP members including Livingstone, the result was far better
than could have been expected, and much better than the disaster the
Blair-rights had tried to inflict and predict.

Measured
against the 2015 General Election, Labour has moved forward solidly,
completely at odds with what the Blair-rights and the Tories have
been trying to claim was inevitable. It is a solid move forward,
because it has been based on the beginning of a return to some kind
of politics based on principle rather than simply chasing your tail
after every new bit of polling information or media driven fad and
panic, which is what the Blair-right excuse for politics is based
on. It meant that Labour could begin to recover all of those 7
million votes workers' votes that it lost during the Blair/Brown
years, and on the basis of having that solid core, can begin to win
over wider sections of workers and the middle class to its ideas.

And that is
the point that the Blair-rights cannot grasp. It is that politics is
about winning a majority to your ideas and principles. The point
about any tent, be it a big one or a small one, is that it has
boundaries, and provides shelter against external forces. It is the
difference to simply standing outside exposed to those elements, and
wandering around aimlessly seeking others to huddle next to for
warmth and shelter. We want to draw others in to our tent rather
than the Tory tent, but we do that on the basis of convincing them
that what is in our tent is better, offers them better shelter and so
on. We do not simply want to make our tent indistinguishable from
theirs, or to attract people into to it on the basis of some kind of
bidding race or beauty contest. We want a big tent only on the basis
that we convince so many people of the correctness of our ideas, that
people flock towards it.

At a local
level, the Tories and Liberals have all but become extinct. It is
only Labour, as a consequence of the momentum behind Corbyn that has
any real local presence, and potential to build on it, by involvement
of local branches in community activities and development. The
election result has been great from that perspective too. It means
that the focus must be on that kind of self-activity and activism
rather than on a load of Council leaders being looked to as the means
of moving forward.

The local
council elections more than the London Elections have then be a great
result for Labour. The Blair-rights and Tories clearly had their
scripts already written of what they were going to say about the
predicted disaster. So, despite the fact that the results were
actually quite good, the Blair-rights and Tories simply rolled out
their pre-scripted mantras. So, the local election results were
great for Labour, if only because it then made those Blair-rights and
Tories look completely stupid and carping. It showed they clearly
cannot think so as to analyse an actual situation beyond the
repetition of old superficialities and sound bites, which is the very
thing that voters have become disillusioned with.

So, the
local elections were great because had their been really big wins for
Labour, even the Blair-rights would have had the sense to keep quiet,
but they were good enough that when the Blair-rights did come out
with their predictable carping, it could be seen as just that,
carping and a continued attempt to undermine the party itself. It is
great because Labour Party members, in the branches, in the trades
unions and elsewhere, will be able to see in plain sight the extent
to which this coterie of self-serving MP's have no interest in the
party outside the furtherance of their own careers and fortunes. It
will show to all those members who will, in coming months, have the
task of selecting candidates for the next elections, the need to root
out all of these time servers, and to replace them with candidates
who put the party ahead of their own personal interests.

The results
in Wales were in many ways better, because of the effect of PR
through the Assembly Members elected from the list. Labour remain
the biggest party, swapping one seat with Plaid. Its only because of
UKIP standing that any effect on Labour's position was felt at all.
The good thing there is that UKIP got such derisory support, and it
is only a matter of time before people like the Hamilton's blow it
apart, in the usual UKIP style.

Scotland

In terms of the actual result, Scotland was obviously the worst place
for Labour. But, in fact a more in depth consideration shows that
Scotland too was a great result for Labour. It was only a bad result
if you view elections in that old Blair-right manner. For years,
Labour won elections in Scotland, and yet during all that time, it
was very bad for Labour, because the Labour Party in Scotland was all
the while being eaten away and was decomposing like a rotten corpse.
It was, in fact, that, which led to the rise of the SNP in the first
place, and created the current problems that Labour faces. For
parties dominated by parliamentarians election victories can in fact
be a death-knell, because so long as those careerist politicians can
keep getting elected, keep drawing their sinecures, they have no
incentive to ensure that the party itself is healthy, that new blood
is being drawn in, that the party itself is engaging with the
community and so on. In fact, those types of politicians have an
incentive to do the exact opposite, because new blood into the party
could present challenge to their cosy situation, and their ability to
allocate favours.

A thorough demolition of the rotten and corrupt political basis upon
which Scottish Labour had been built over decades was probably a
fundamental requirement for rebuilding Scottish Labour on a more
solid foundations. There is nothing better for deterring careerists
from a party than the prospect of having to put in years of real hard
work in building the party, and working in the community with no
immediate prospect of getting elected. Its why the Blair-rights are
so aghast at that prospect.

Scotland also exposed some of the lunacies of the Blair-rights, and
the way they are incapable of any kind of political analysis outside
reaching for the nearest soundbite, or superficiality as a means of
trying to score points. They are little better than professional
political trolls. For example, last week, Chris Leslie, leapt in to
a TV studio anxious to decry the party's election results. In his
rush to attack Corbyn and the idea that more radical policies against
Trident, austerity and so on could be popular, he leaped into the
example of the Scottish result and the fact that the Tories had come
second to prove his point.

In doing so, he seems to have completely missed the fact that Labour
is not the only party in Scotland proposing opposition to Trident,
austerity and so on. In his rush, not surprisingly given his own
politics and past willingness to support Tory austerity measures,
attacks on welfare and so on, to glory in the Tories second place, he
seems to have missed the fact that the party that won an almost
majority of seats – the SNP – is also committed to opposing
Trident, and that it verbally at least opposes austerity.

If the seats of all the parties in Scotland opposing Trident,
austerity and so on is totalled up, it comes to more than 80% of the
seats. The voters who supported the kind of Tory-lite policies that
Chris Leslie proposes were actually a tiny minority in these
elections, so had he stopped to think for a moment rather than just
rush for a soundbite, he might have seen that the facts quite clearly
contradict the line he has been trying to cast. In fact, what
Scotland shows, and what the local election and Welsh results show is
that there is a solid basis for a more defined social-democratic
position of the kind Corbyn has been trying to set out, amidst all of
the din being made by the Blair-rights who have tried to drown it
out.

The problem in Scotland has been the inability of Labour to undo the
damage caused by years of corruption and decay within the party
itself, deriving from a reliance on electoralism and town hall
machine politics. It is a failure to separate itself from the
disastrous popular front politics of the Scottish referendum, which
is being mirrored today by those same Blair-right politicians
undermining Labour by sitting shoulder to shoulder on phone banks and
elsewhere with some of the most vicious, anti-working class Tories
seen in a generation, over the EU referendum.

Scottish voters clearly decided that if they were going to vote for a
reactionary unionist party they may as well vote for the real thing,
and voted Tory. Scottish voters have not yet come to realise that
just as with the Liberal-Democrats faux radicalism, prior to 2010, so
too with the SNP. The vote for the SNP's verbal radicalism is
clearly no support for the line being cast by the Blair-rights and
Tories, but it is only a matter of time before the hypocrisy of the
SNP's position is exposed. They do, after all have their roots in
nationalism and conservatism. It is then only a matter of time,
before a revitalised, and rebuilt Scottish Labour is able to take
advantage of that realisation.

A rebirth in Scotland will ensure that all of the talk about Labour
needing a 13 point lead in England will also then disappear by the
time the next General Election comes along. A rebuilt Scottish
Labour, which wins back 40 seats and more, and does so on the basis
of a forward looking radical agenda, being carried forward across the
whole of Britain, to meet the needs of a single British
working-class, rather than pandering to national divisions for short
term electoral advantage, will be in a position to win a clear
majority in Westminster. Its on that basis that the election results
considered politically rather than simply electorally were great for
labour.

About Me

Left school at 16. Became an ASTMS shop steward at 19, and a lifelong trade union activist. Delegate to North Staffs Trades Council 1974-87. Secretary North Staffs Miners Support Committee 1984-5. President North Staffs Trades Council 1985-6 and 1986-7. Delegate to Staffordshire Association of Trades Councils 1985-7. Delegate West Midlands Regional Council of the TUC 1985-7. Secretary Newcastle UNISON 2000-2.
Member of the International Communist League/Workers Socialist League 1974-87.
Went to University as mature student at age of 24. Obtained Joint Honours Degree in Economics and Politics with Philosophy and Statistics, followed by a Post Graduate Certificate in Education.
Labour Party member since 1974. Stoke City Councillor 1983-4, expelled from Labour group 1983, and resigned from Council in 1984 because of refusing to vote for rent and rate rises, and budget cuts. Staffordshire County Councillor 1997-2005.
Assistant Secretary Stoke District Labour Party 1981, and held pretty much every position from Executive member, to Branch Secretary, and Branch Chair.